What Should Democrats Do to “Win Back” Black Men?
As the 2024 election cycle heats up, political analysts are warning that a key challenge facing the Democrats’ electoral coalition is weak support among Black voters–especially Black men. Analysts have identified a modest, secular shift among Black men away from Democratic candidates and Democratic Party identification over recent election cycles. Maintaining high support and engagement in this key segment of the party’s base is critical for success in 2024 and beyond. But what is the right strategy to achieve this goal?
[Note: This is an abridged version of our full analysis. A full version with technical details and a powerpoint summary deck are each available on our website.]
Using data from our own 2040 Strategy Group polling of Black Americans in late 2023, as well as data from the American National Election Study and the Nationscape survey, we analyzed decades of opinion data on Black men (and others) in order to assess what approach is most likely to shore up Black support in 2024. Our analysis reveals good reason to question an emerging perspective among some political analysts, which we call the cultural conservatism thesis. This thesis holds that erosion in Black support for the Democratic Party is due to a new gap between Black men’s conservative positions on a range of cultural issues (relative to many Democrats’ increasingly progressive positions), and that the remedy is for the Democratic party to engage Black men with culturally conservative messaging.
Contrary to the cultural conservatism thesis, we find that Black men are on average slightly more liberal on both cultural and economic issues than the public at large. While a segment of Black men are to the right of center (on both cultural and economic issues), a significant majority are not. Building a strategy to appeal to this small, more conservative segment of Black men would move messaging farther away from the majority of Black men and the majority of the Black community, potentially alienating, confusing, or demobilizing the significant majority of this key segment of the party’s base.
The Challenge: the Erosion of Black Support for the Democratic Party
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s, Black Americans have long been a steadfast constituency of the Democratic Party. More than any other major demographic group, Black voters have consistently voted as a bloc in support of Democrats. This has been especially true in historic “first” elections when a Black candidate has been on the ballot — most notably the historic support for Barack Obama among Black voters in 2008 and 2012 — but Black voters have stood out as a particularly Democratic bloc in nearly every election since the 1960s.
However, since 2008, when there was near unanimous support for Barack Obama, Black support for Democratic candidates has declined modestly in each successive election cycle, and many many media accounts and analyses predict an even bigger drop-off this year. The figure above shows the percentage of Democratic party support among all respondents (i.e., both those who reported voting, and not voting) tells a similar story, with historic highs in 2008 giving way to a decline of about 10 percent by 2020.
The recent erosion may be as much reversion to the mean after Obama’s elections as a true long-term decline; however, the trend in party identification found by Gallup and Black respondents’ (especially Black men’s) reported plans for 2024 suggest that Democrats should not take past levels of Black support and mobilization for granted.
These recent trends suggest an important challenge for the Democratic coalition in upcoming election cycles, where close competition means even small marginal changes can be decisive in the diverse, polarized swing states that determine control of national political institutions. While the declines in support are modest, and Black voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic, maintaining Black support and engagement is crucial for the Democratic party in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other constituencies. If a shift in broad ideological messaging can help to shore up these blocs, a reconsideration of strategy or messaging could be the ticket to victories in 2024. But in order to develop these strategies, we first must understand the broad distribution of Black opinion — because if we misdiagnose the cause, then the cure could do more harm than good.
What Explains this Trend?
Given these trends, a few potential explanations for this erosion of Black support for the Democratic party have emerged. Some analysts have advanced the cultural conservatism thesis — which, again, holds that this erosion is due to Black men’s relative conservatism on a range of cultural issues — appears to be driven by a mild statistical “gender effect” among Black voters, but is based primarily on observations from small focus group discussions among Black men. But in order to develop a robust national party strategy heading into November, it is necessary to also consider evidence from opinion polls to better understand the general structure of Black public opinion (especially among Black men).
Testing the cultural conservatism thesis: The cultural conservatism account relies on an implicit spatial model of ideological change: the claim is that the Democratic party has moved too far “left” on a cultural dimension, and needs to either move back to the “right” to regain the support of Black men, or de-emphasize cultural issues and talk more about the party’s economic platform. To assess this argument, we engage it on its own terms, using a conventional model of political ideology along a left-to-right, liberal-conservative ideological spectrum.
We examined this idea using historical data from the American National Election Study, Nationscape, and our own 2040 Strategy Group polling from late 2023. In summary, there isn’t much evidence for this theory of Black men’s public opinion:
· They’re not conservative, even when we break it down to culture-wars type social issues
· This hasn’t changed much over time
· Most don’t see the Democratic Party as moving too far left
Our full research brief goes into more detail, but this figure based on our polling from 2023 sums it up succinctly:
Many more Black men see themselves as left-of-center than right-of-center, so shifting to conservative messages is as likely to be counterproductive as it is to slow the erosion. The cultural conservatism thesis may be confusing correlation with distribution: while Black men are more likely than Black women to be conservative (this is true for men generally), they aren’t actually likely to be conservative.
How to Re-Engage Black Americans
So if the answer is not for the Democratic party to swing to the right on cultural issues to try to appeal to Black male voters, what is the strategy moving forward? Data from the 2040 Strategy Group’s recent polling of Black Americans offers suggestions and a way forward to re-engage these voters.
Our polling found three major recurrent themes that are relevant here:
· There is a real danger of a big drop in enthusiasm and support among Black voters in 2024, but it’s concentrated among young Black men and Black voters who are not connected to politics, not alienated conservatives.
· Black voters want to hear more from the Democrats on issues that are directly connected to the Black community: attacks by the GOP on civil rights, ; as well as issues that affect Black communities disproportionately, like gun violence and health disparities.
· Messaging that Democrats are taking action on issues directly related to the Black community can both persuade and mobilize. When we provided messages explaining Biden administration efforts on initiatives directly tied to Black Americans’ experiences, support for Biden increased by double-digits.
Our results indicate that rather than back away from progressive cultural positions, Democrats should lean into connecting with Black voters on a particular set of cultural issues, and take positions that resonate and are salient with Black communities: this includes speaking honestly about racism in American society, supporting voting rights, supporting justice and inclusion in the workplace and in other public institutions, and advancing policies to solve problems that particularly impact Black Americans, such as health disparities.
Conclusion
Both proponents and critics of the cultural conservatism thesis emphasize that Democrats need a Black voter strategy to retain and remobilize Black voters and shore up their overall coalition. There is considerable disagreement on which strategy (or combination of strategies) is likely to yield the best results. The results reported in this memo suggest that a strategy premised in the Democratic party moving to the right on cultural issues in order to appeal to Black male voters would be unwise. Such a strategy, in fact, may not only demobilize or confuse as many Black men as it might pick up, but it would also move messaging away from the majority of Black , and potentially confuse core base voters like Black women and white progressives.
For more details, please see our full research brief or an powerpoint summary deck with more analyses. This research was conducted by the 2040 Strategy Group team: Alvin Tillery, Tabitha Bonilla, and Thomas Ogorzalek.
